Commentary on Economics, Information and Human Action

Search Results for: fisheries

Lynne Kiesling Researchers at PERC have been working on free-market environmentalism and property rights-based approaches to aligning economic and environmental values for decades. This video does an excellent job of highlighting the work that PERC scholars and others have done to make ocean fisheries more sustainable by moving from open-access overfishing to population and profit … More Saving fisheries with property rights

Lynne Kiesling Why is it so difficult, in terms of politics and transaction costs, to define and enforce property rights in fish? If we fail to do so, some important fish species are likely to go extinct due to overfishing, such as the bluefin tuna. Migratory fish like the bluefin pose the biggest policy challenges, … More Overfishing and the impending collapse of fisheries

This BBC article on big data and fisheries is fascinating. Using satellite photography, researchers have mapped all of the world’s fisheries by area, finding that fishery area is larger than arable acreage while providing less than 2% of all calories consumed. I also found the conclusion thought-provoking that the patterns reveal larger effects from politics … More BBC News: World’s fishing fleets mapped from orbit

I think we could use some good news this week. According to an article in the Baltimore Sun, the current blue crab population in the Chesapeake Bay is one-third larger than it was at the same time in 2015: There are more than 550 million blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay, an increase of more … More Good environmental news from the Chesapeake

Lynne Kiesling Case Western law professor Jonathan Adler (someone to whom I link frequently here) is guest blogging for Megan McArdle at the Atlantic right now, and he’s sharing some valuable insights from his research in environmental and administrative law. His first post lays a foundation by summarizing and analyzing Garrett Hardin’s seminal “tragedy of … More Jonathan Adler on common-pool resources

Lynne Kiesling Yesterday was Earth Day, and here’s a good way to observe it: Andrew Langer and Iain Murray argue for catch shares as a sustainable free-market fisheries policy. The idea is simple: give fishermen an ownership stake in a particular fishery through the assignment of quotas, which can be traded. The quotas give individual … More Catch shares and sustainable fishing

Lynne Kiesling Jonathan Adler reports from a PERC workshop on fisheries management and how property rights institutions can reduce pervasive overfishing problems in fishing. Overfishing is a serious environmental and economic problem, and Jon provides excellent links to the body of research showing that property rights institutions, such as tradeable catch shares, can reduce overfishing … More Overfishing conference at PERC

Michael Giberson Among the news stories in response to Elinor Ostrom’s sharing of the Nobel prize for economics, an article from Alaska which mentions the important role played by Vincent Ostrom in the development of that state’s treatment of natural resources. Both Ostroms worked on related ideas and management of natural resources was central to … More Vincent and Elinor Ostrom and public ownership of natural resources